The optical measurement apparatus can simply measure blood circulation, blood flow and change of the hemoglobin amount inside the living body under with less constraint and without damage to the subjects. Because of recent success in visualizing measurement data by using a multichannel apparatus, clinical application of this apparatus is highly expected.
It has been reported that clinical applications of the optical measurement apparatus include diagnosis of epilepsy, cerebral ischemia and other diseases and investigation of language function. Non-patent documents 1 and 2 listed below report that the biological optical measurement founds abnormality in the pattern of change of the hemoglobin amount in the frontal lobe of psychiatric-patients such as depression and schizophrenia. Concretely, the maximum value of a time waveform of hemoglobin is large, small and medium in normal subjects, depressive patients and schizophrenic patients, respectively. These reports suggest potential of using the time waveform of hemoglobin in the diagnosis of psychosis. However, because the time waveform of hemoglobin is obtained as data by each of channels when a multi-channel optical measurement apparatus is used, it is not easy to do accurate diagnosis by comparing these multiple waveforms.
Non-patent document 1: “Significance of multi-channel near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) measurement in psychiatry” Masato Fukuda, et al. “Brain Science and Mental Disorders”, Volume 14, No. 2 (Special Volume), Shinkoh-Igaku Shuppan Co., Ltd. Non-patent document 2: “Mind viewed with light (HIKARI DE MIRU KOKORO)” Masato Fukuda, et al. “Kokoro and Shakai (Mind and Society)”, Volume 34, No. 1 (Special Volume), Japanese Association of Mentaly Health (Nippon Seisin-eisei kai)
The applicant of this invention has also proposed a optical measurement apparatus equipped with functions to extract features from the waveforms of change in the hemoglobin amount, convert them into numerical data and display them each of disease (Japanese Patent Application No. 2002-85350). This optical measurement apparatus can, by comparing the feature amount displayed for each disease and that measured for the subjects, estimate the degree of disease with respect to said measured feature amount.
However, for accurate diagnosis of disease, particularly psychopathic disease, a comprehensive diagnosis based on the multiple features rather than a single feature is required. When said optical measurement apparatus is used, a doctor and/or operator is required to perform a comprehensive diagnosis based on the individual feature amount.